Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages

How is it possible to acknowledge and confront patriarchal violence within Muslim migrant communities without descending into cultural deficit explanations (they are overly patriarchal and inherently uncivilised) and without inviting extraordinary measures of stigmatisation, surveillance and control so increased after the events of September 11, 2001? In this paper, I explore this question by examining Norway's responses to the issue of forced marriages. I argue that social and political responses to violence against women in Muslim communities have been primarily culturalist. That is, the violence is understood as originating entirely in culture, an approach that obscures the multiple factors that give rise to and sustain the violence. The culturalist approach enables the stigmatising and surveillance of Muslim communities. I approach this argument in two parts. In part one I discuss two important and influential books written by women who identify their concerns as feminist and who lay out the case for considering the problem of forced marriage as a problem of controlling fundamentally unassimilable and culturally inferior Muslims. I explore these works as paradigmatic of the culturalising or culturalist move. In part two, I review a variety of legal initiatives in Norway, first contextualising them as part of a larger European venture to control Muslim populations and then examining what they share conceptually with the approaches in part one. I end with how we might begin to develop an anti-racist response to the problem of violence against women.     

社会文化现象的象征意义及解读--以木戛拉祜纳年节仪式的分析为例

用不同的文化象征法来研究少数民族年节仪式的象征因素时 ,不仅要借鉴不同的分析方法 ,还必须考虑到塑造社会文化象征意义的各种社会历史条件和内在差异。在相关分析中 ,研究者应该明确 ,不同层次的意义和对社会意义的不同方式的解释 ,都是从不同角度表达的社会真实 ,不要忽视那些动态的社会文化意义 ,特别是隐藏在动态的文化再生产中的权力关系。     

与时俱进的理论创新——以马克思恩格斯的革命策略思想演进为例

马克思恩格斯根据不断变化的资本主义经济政治发展的事实,不断调整无产阶级革命斗争策略,并最终完成从暴力革命转向和平过渡的重大理论突破,形成了关于无产阶级革命的性质、进程和策略的新思想,树立了一个与时俱进的理论创新的典范。     

亲密与伤害:美国家庭暴力中受害妇女的法律保护

家庭暴力是与婚姻关系中的文化观念和权利分配不公平息息相关的。幸运的是,在妇女运动的推动下,世界开始变化。在美国,反对家庭暴力的呼声和行动日益增强,为家庭暴力的受害妇女提供救济的途径越来越多。社会各界开始关注家庭暴力问题,并给妇女权益保护运动提供了强有力的支持。政府也开始意识到家庭暴力问题的严重,通过立法的方式对施暴者严厉制裁,从而维护受害妇女的合法权益。     

“Mitigating Instigation”: Cultural Phenomenological Influences of Anger and Fighting Among “Big-Boned” and “Baby-Faced” African American Youth

While the violent behavior of youth continues to strike fear in the hearts of American citizens, researchers still are unable to make sense of interpersonal and ecological cultural factors that mitigate anger acted out toward others and turned inward. A cultural phenomenological perspective was applied to investigate if self- and other-perceived physical maturity and racial socialization experiences were influential in the expressions of anger and aggression among African American youth. Cross-validation of self-reports of fighting variables was found. Results indicate that the initiation and frequency of fighting behavior is higher for boys, youth who look physically mature, who report lower levels of calamity fear, lower levels of racial socialization, higher levels of anger acting out, and lower levels of anger control. Racial socialization is proposed as 1 way to manage cultural ecological demands that may lead to the use of aggression. Implications for community psychological intervention of violence are proposed.     

Knowledge of child abuse and neglect in nursing students: Assessment and perspectives

Misdiagnosis of child abuse and neglect can delay early treatment. Some authors have pointed out that nurses can miss child abuse and neglect diagnoses due to a lack of knowledge. It is unclear whether the lack of knowledge is due to students' insufficient preparation in nursing school and/or a deficiency in continuing education. An 18-item questionnaire was administered to final-year nursing students to assess their degree of knowledge on child abuse and neglect and to evaluate if the lack of knowledge was due to insufficient teaching/training during nursing school. The students were also asked to evaluate themselves by assigning a score to their knowledge. A statistical comparison was performed to define whether sufficient/insufficient results were associated with the following variables: sex, pediatric or general nursing student, attending pediatric lectures, training in pediatric wards/ambulatories, and attending specific lectures on child abuse and neglect. The study population comprised 175 students (154 females, 20 males, 1 unknown). Exactly 66.3% of the participants had ≤9/18 correct answers. Of all students, 77.7% self-evaluated their level of knowledge as ≤5/10. The comparisons yielded statistically significant differences between the groups with sufficient objective knowledge and those unrelated to training in pediatric wards/ambulatories or pediatric nursing students. Overall, there was little objective knowledge on the subject, which may be related to insufficient teaching/training in nursing schools. Useful corrective strategies include further teaching on child abuse and neglect, preferably using a practical approach. Further, common teaching/training programs should be conducted by both pediatric and general nursing schools.     

Streetwork at the crossroads: An evaluation of a street gang outreach intervention and holistic appraisal of the research evidence

Spurred by the success of public health violence interventions, and accelerated by policy pressure to reduce violence without exacerbating overpolicing and mass incarceration, streetwork programs—those that provide anti-violence services by neighborhood-based workers who perform their work beyond the walls of parochial institutions—have positioned themselves as the most important non–law-enforcement violence prevention option available to urban policy makers. Yet despite their importance, the state of the field seems difficult to interpret for academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we make several contributions that bring forth new findings and deliver new perspectives on streetwork as a violence reduction strategy. First, we offer an extended analytic review of the streetwork evaluation literature that connects the study of contemporary public health violence interventions to a preceding tradition of criminologically inspired streetwork studies. Second, we present the results of an impact evaluation of StreetSafe Boston (SSB)—a multiyear streetwork intervention that served 20 Boston gangs. We find that the SSB intervention had no detectable effect on violence among the gangs that it served. We conclude by offering a framework for understanding a field at multiple crossroads: past and present, proclaimed successes and failures, help and harm.     

A wall of treatments: An integrative problem-solving approach to the prevention of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem

Research summary

There is growing evidence that some proactive policing strategies have shown promising results in reducing crime. Most of these strategies are generally applied separately to address specific components of criminal behavior, while the involvement in the crime itself may be caused by different factors. This raises the question of whether an integrative approach that addresses these factors could be an appropriate approach to reduce involvement in the crime. Furthermore, most of these policing strategies have been applied toward regular crime; this leaves us with the question of whether these strategies would show similar results when political offenses are involved as well. Our study focuses on the political offense of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem, usually by Palestinian teenage boys. We applied an integrative approach in one of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which included strategies such as focused deterrence, place-based policing, cognitive behavioral therapy, diversion to nonenforcement tracks, and interventions at the community level. We found a large and significant reduction in the targeted neighborhood compared to similar Palestinian neighborhoods. We have not found evidence of displacement, but rather evidence of significant diffusion of crime-control benefits.

Policy implications

The results of the study suggest that an integrative approach that addresses the risks and needs of minority youth can help reduce their future involvement in political offenses. Furthermore, the implementation of promising strategies in the wider context of policing regular crimes may also be effective in responding to political offenses.     

农村留守妇女问题研究述评

本文对国内学者在留守妇女的产生原因、经济与社会地位的变化、婚姻状况以及生存状况方面的研究进行系统梳理,在此基础上提出可以进一步研究制度背景下的留守妇女为何没有形成集体认同感、留守妇女如何打破"符号暴力"等问题.